I had a late-night beer with God last Friday.

“This one’s on me,” I said,

slapping my ten dollars down hard on the bar.

Exhaustion from a day of creation/damnation

masked the party face of

The One Who Cannot Be Named.

No words passed between us.

We just tapped our pale ales in a nonreligious toast:

to life,

to mercy,

to the lyrics of Leonard Cohen,

God offering up the same wink on Friday

that Satan hands out on Saturday.